However, many tattooists who have been established for a few years, especially those who own shops, are often somewhat closed to accepting new ways of doing things.  These artists often feel that what they know was learned through years of struggle, and they feel justified in not taking change lightly.  Tattooists in this position are likely to have apprentices who will succumb to their influence for better or worse.  In many cases, these artists will impose a very rigid method upon their apprentices as one of the required conditions of their employment.

Generally, this style of apprenticeship will have ironclad rules that must be followed, or it’s the end of the world.  Some of these rules may be helpful in keeping a new tattooist out of trouble for the first few weeks or months, but they can stop being useful as the apprentice gains more experience, and eventually these guiding rules become mandates that prevent professional development.  Some ancient wisdom says, “Know the rules, so you can break them properly.”  Anyone who really knows what they’re doing doesn’t strictly or blindly adhere to rules to guide them; they just follow their intuition, letting experience be their guide.

An example of this is the “liner” and “shader” misunderstanding.  We are normally taught that our small round needle groups are for lining and our larger rounds and magnums are for shading and coloring.  We are also shown a few basic movements of the hand which are the Official Approved Tattoo Hand Motions.  Within this simple way of seeing it are the ingredients for clean outlines and shading, but nothing fancy or subtle.  Often, this approved way of applying the tattoo is so rigid that even an artist experienced in other mediums, and quite good at them, can never quite get the hang of tattooing.  Many times you’ll meet very talented individuals who do beautiful work in pencil or paint, yet their tattooing is merely average, showing none of the fire that they demonstrate in their other chosen mediums.  This is almost always the result of them allowing themselves to be bound by rules that are no longer necessary for a tattooist of their artistic skill level.

When painters are using a variety of different sized paintbrushes, they are unlikely to think of the small brushes as “liners” and the large ones as “shaders”.  These names will only limit what the artist feels they can do with each tool.  Instead, they are simply the small brushes and the large brushes, and are used interchangeably as the job requires.  In this same manner, I encourage you to think of your needle groups as brushes, and refer to them by their description, not their traditional name.  For instance, I often will work with a 3, a 5 round and a 7 magnum; I refer to them not as liners and shaders but simply as the 3, the 5 round and the 7 mag, and I’ll switch freely between them while I work, just as I would with brushes.  Nice and easy, and I’m not subliminally convincing myself that I’m only allowed to make lines with the 3 or 5 round.

Another example of a tattoo technique myth is the notion that you must finish the black first, then work the darkest colors, moving your way through the medium and light colors, finally finishing with the yellow and white.  Common wisdom says that you can stain a fresh area of light color by spilling or wiping a dark color over it, so by working from dark to light, there’s no risk of that happening.  But does this need to be so ironclad?

My experience is that you can work the colors in whatever order you like, provided you’re conscious not to stain the lightest pigments.  You do this by keeping the light colors protected with petroleum jelly and wiping the dark colors away from the light ones.  Small amounts of dark pigment wiped over lighter ones don’t seem to make a difference; only by dry-wiping and really grinding it in will you have any risk of staining, which then would be likely to fall out in the healing process.  Simply put, only the pigment particles that are rammed into an adequate depth during tattooing are destined to stay there.  It’s sometimes just mentally easiest to move in a general dark-to-light direction while tattooing, but always give yourself the flexibility to work with whatever color you need to at any time.  I often continue to work with black after many of the dark and medium colors have been put in.  As long as we’re aware that staining can potentially happen and we do what we need to prevent it, we have no need for these ironclad rules.

Now that I’ve started debunking much of what you’ve been taught, I think it’s important for me to point out that nothing I have to say in this book is necessarily true, either.  Just like all the stuff you’ve heard from other artists, these words are merely ideas to consider while doing your next tattoo.  It’s up to you to find the truth out for yourself, and to always be flexible when it comes to what you believe can and can’t be done.  Once you have the basic feel for the process, you need to begin questioning what you know and exploring what might be possible.

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